CURE Talks Cancer

In this episode of the “CURE® Talks Cancer” podcast, a cancer survivor explains how she took a lighthearted and comedic approach to her cancer treatment process and went on to create a coloring book based on the funny thoughts she had.

Will patients be given a placebo? Are clinical trials safe? An expert answers these questions and more.

 Steve Kelley is a professor, public speaker, grandfather and avid biker, among other things. But he is also living with central nervous system lymphoma, a rare cancer that his doctors told him is incurable and inoperable. After being unable to find peers facing a similar diagnosis, Kelley decided to share his story in the book, “Cancer R.I.P.: The Ultimate Fight.”   In this episode of the “CURE® Talks Cancer” podcast, Kelley opens up about his cancer journey and offers others advice on how to get through life after receiving such a shattering diagnosis.

Tomika Bryant is a breast cancer survivor, patient advocate and blogger, among other things. She uses her platform and experiences with cancer to support others going through the journey and raise awareness and funding for research. In this episode of the “CURE® Talks Cancer” podcast, Bryant shares her story, offers advice and discusses her blog, Life in Pumps, as well as her advocacy work. “Write, journal, because it's therapeutic,” Bryant said. “Don't go to sleep with all that on your mind. It's hard to get rest as is just from dealing with all of the complications and side effects that come from being a cancer patient. But clearing your mind is one of the best ways for when you lay down and go to sleep. So for me, my blog also became that.”

Dr. William Breitbart is the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), where he’s been for 37 years. Breitbart recently spoke on the Cancer Straight Talk podcast from MSK about the impact on mental health brought about by the COVID-19 world. In this episode of the “CURE® Talks Cancer” podcast, Breitbart discusses the toll the pandemic has had on patients, survivors and caregivers and ways for them to manage their stressors.  “For cancer survivors, death is more real and more difficult to deny and avoid,” said Breitbart. And so, during the pandemic, this enhanced death salience that bombards us at almost every moment from wearing the mask to being restricted in your social interactions to turning on the TV and hearing how many people have COVID and how many people have died. It's inescapable. And so, what it produces is this sense of really intense death anxiety.”

In this episode of the “CURE® Talks Cancer” podcast, Maria Ciesla, an ovarian cancer survivor, and her daughter Alex Cornwell discuss Ciesla’s cancer journey and how it led them to do genetic testing that revealed they were both carriers of the BRCA1 mutation.